Read The Long Glasgow Kiss for Free Online Page B

name like Ishbell Pollock. They had done a good job on her. A Glasgow club singer, one amongst thousands. But they had had great raw material to work with. Sheila Gainsborough had the looks – she certainly had the looks – and the voice to stand out from the crowd. She’d been talent-scouted. Groomed. Repackaged. Managed. She maybe had the looks and the voice but the name Ishbell Pollock and the Glasgow accent would have been dropped faster than utility-mark panties on VE Day.
    I wrote Sammy’s full name in my notebook. ‘When did you last see Sammy?’
    ‘Lunch at the Tea Rooms, a week past Saturday.’
    ‘What about friends … girls … people he used to hang around with? And you said he has been associating with a bad crowd. Can you put any names to them?’
    ‘He has this friend, Barnier. A Frenchman. Sammy mentioned him a couple of times. I think they were friends, but it could have been a business thing.’
    ‘First name?’
    She shook her head. ‘Sammy always just called him Barnier. There can’t be that many Frenchies in Glasgow.’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘They probably come here in their droves for the cuisine.’ We both smiled. ‘Anyone else?’
    ‘I was at his flat one day and he got a telephone call from a girl. They sounded intimate. All I got was her first name. Claire. But there were a couple of guys he knew who I really didn’t like the look of. Rough types.’
    ‘Names?’
    ‘Sorry. I only saw them once, waiting for Sammy outside the club. They had the look as if … I don’t know … as if they didn’t want to be seen. But they were a shiftless sort. Late twenties, one about five-eight with dark hair, the other maybe an inch shorter with sandy hair. The one with the dark hair has a scar on his forehead. Shaped like a crescent.’
    I sat and looked at her, deep in thought. She looked back eagerly, obviously reassured that she had provoked some deep, investigative cogitations. What I was really thinking about was what it would be like to bend her over my desk.
    ‘Okay. Thanks,’ I said once the picture was complete. ‘Would it be possible for us to go to your brother’s flat … have a look around?’
    She looked at her watch. ‘I need to be on the sleeper to London tonight. I’ve a lot to do beforehand. Could we go now?’
    I stood up and smiled. ‘My car is around the corner.’
    The Atlantic had been sitting in the sun and I rolled down the windows before holding the door open for Sheila Gainsborough to get in. I found myself casting an eye up and down the street in the desperate hope that someone – anyone – I knew was there to see me let this beautiful, rich and famous woman into my car. Two youths passed without noticing, followed by an old man wearing a flat cap and, despite the temperature, a heavy, thick, dark blue jacket and a neckerchief tied at his throat. He paused only to spit profusely on the pavement. I didn’t take it as a sign of his being impressed.
    Even with the windows open, the car was stifling; the air heady in its confines: hot wood and leather mingled with the lavender from Sheila’s perfume and a vague hint of a musky odour from her body.
    Sammy Pollock’s flat was on the west side of the city centre, but not quite the West End. We drove without speaking along Sauchiehall Street to where the numbers started to climb into the thousands and she told me to turn right. A ribbon of park broke up the ranks of three-storey Georgian terraces. There were some kids playing on the grass and mothers, prams parked beside them, sat indolently on the park benches, beaten listless by summer heat and motherhood.
    Pollock’s apartment was actually over two levels of one of the semi-grand stone terraces. At one time the terrace would have gleamed golden sandstone. A once brightly coloured arch of stained glass and lead work sat above the door, almost Viennese: Charles Rennie Mackintosh style or similar. But Glasgow was a city of ceaseless work. Dirty work.